Clarifying analysis on Meta's legal settlement, via @kait.bsky.social. The product adjustments are smaller than they appear (and might even be considered to violate the First Amendment) while Meta also maintains tremendous power over the social-media industry www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
![In the days of tavern dining, proprietors would have wanted customers to fill up on as much bread as possible, so that they would consume less of the more expensive ingredients to which they were entitled. À la carte restaurants perhaps felt themselves grandfathered into what had become a mark of hospitality. Chefs I consult attest to free bread’s ability—a finite ability—to make kitchens run more smoothly (by slowing down orders). It also makes customers less whiny: Restaurants give you free bread “just so that you have something to do with your hands and your mouth,” Richard Horner, a New Orleans chef and restaurateur, tells me.
Horner lays bare the strategic timing of this generosity. Ideally, free bread should not hit the table until after customers have ordered their meal, “because then they order from a position of maximum hungriness,” he says. Plus, the delay builds anticipation: “Will there be bread? I see other people with bread. We haven’t got bread yet.” And then, once the bread is bestowed: “Oh! There is bread! What a fun surprise.”
Horner’s demonic calculation for how many slices or rolls each table’s basket should contain is [Number of diners] + 1. Unevenly divisible bread creates “a tension that I really enjoy.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:jxtnw3qiuq4wtx7sggjbbvi3/bafkreicedzvam3gcswshjbifdqnbzsdsa54htt2deghal4rt7gpf5d2a3e)
